Where did this journey to games start for you?
TL;DRCorentin Grenier went from an audiovisual master's through an internship and a COVID-era job hunt to CIG, while Dan went from QA to junior audio, indie composer, and contract work including dialogue editing for a game.
So where did I start? After university, I had an audiovisual master's degree, then internship, the natural flow. I was doing a bit of everything. I worked on an audio fiction with binaural techniques and it was really cool. A few bits of sound design here and there, some VR as well. And then COVID happened and it was really hard to find a job at first. So I was working on my demo every day. It took me a while, but finally I landed a job here at CIG. I wanted to do games, and so I'm very happy now to be here.
How about you, Dan? Just give me the full CV.
Yeah, I started out in QA at TT Games. This was after university. I did my bachelor's and I was working at a bar at the time. So I spoke to a family friend who said, if you want to work in the industry... Because originally I wanted to be a recording engineer, like everyone that goes to audio university wants to be. They get in front of the desks and they think, this is me. When there were 60 people that all wanted to be music producers, I thought, well, we all can't be. So I thought, I'll try this out instead. So I spoke to a family friend who at the time worked at Evolution Studios in Runcorn, who I think are Codemasters now. He said, apply for a QA job in the industry. So I worked at TT Games for a while and then there was a requirement of extra audio staff for a game release. So I joined the team as a junior for a short time just for that game release and then was let go after that. But then I joined an indie studio as a composer and sound designer. So I was in charge of everything on the games. It was mobile and digital card games and that kind of thing. But that was really good in letting me be in charge of something, which was dangerous. I really enjoyed having that agency of: I come up with the solutions to the problems. I caused some problems along the way. And then COVID happened, so that gig kind of came to a close. I went self-employed. Started as a contractor at an audio outsource firm, worked for Supermassive Games on one of their last releases, The Quarry, which was great. I worked on dialogue for that. So it was all the PCAP data coming in, editing that in iZotope RX, and it was coming in from the shoot hot, like the day after, unedited. And then I just got it edited and it was back in game. So I touched all the dialogue in that game and it was a great experience, but it was contract work. So it came to a halt at one point, and then now I'm here.